HELP! Rover wheels damaged , need engineer to fix

[lextacy]

I just launched an unmanned rover, UNMANNED. And the game want an engineer to magically come and fix it. Is there a way to not have that? I just want to right-click fix the wheel.

Edited February 4, 2015 by lextacy

[AlexinTokyo]

Not to the best of my knowledge. Wheel repairs have always required a Kerbal present, and from 0.90.0 specifically an engineer.

It's designed as a trade off, I think; unmanned is cheaper and safer, but manned gives you more options.

That said, there may be a mod which enables unmanned repairs.

[KerikBalm]

the game want an engineer to magically come and fix it. Is there a way to not have that? I just want to right-click fix the wheel.

And you want it to magically fix itself?

You can easily open your safe file with a text editor and change the state from broken to... I forget what it was, look at the state of the other operation wheels... copy and paste.

...

And try not to break your wheel again. Its not like you expect to be able to fix broken rockets and such. Why is this any different?

[Janos1986]

Make multiple quicksaves next time.

[Merandix]

This usually means rescue mission. And yes, manned. If you want unmanned, this is one of the downsides, and you'll just have to take that into account.

The game isn't expecting you to magically make a Kerbal appear, the game is expecting you not to break it in the first place, just like reality. The Mars Rover Spirit has functioned with a broken (stalled) wheel from 2006 to 2011 (when it ceased functioning completely). NASA didn't expect a repairman to suddenly pop up on Mars either.

If something breaks on an robotic vehicle, that's a shame, but you'll either have to try to cope with the faulty part, abandon the mission completely, or send a rescue mission. And that last one is an option that isn't very realistic actually, but we still have it in KSP.

From experience, rescue missions like that are actually a big charm of KSP. When something goes wrong, and you fix it... that's awesome! Self repair would be boring as heck. It's actually a perk of having an engineer aboard; if something breaks, you fix it

[eddiew]

I believe wheels will magically self-repair in sandbox mode But outside of that, yeah, look after them because you need a man on the ground to deal with mechanical failures.

General rover safety tips to avoid mishap:

- add a reaction wheel

- drive in LIN(ear) docking mode with SAS on; this will prevent flips

- turn SAS off to change direction, but only do this at low speeds

- tap the brakes if you're going faster than the wheel's max design speed; don't be tempted to go 20m/s on wheels rated for 10, they'll just break

- avoid jumps and drops; zoom out if you can't see very far ahead and check it's not a cliff

If you do all of these, then you can basically drive at 4x timewarp without incident, which more than makes up for having to keep your speed down

It's worth considering 6-wheelers in future as well, since they will generally tolerate the loss of up to 3 wheels and keep going, where a 4 wheel rover can only lose 1.

[Panzerbeard]

As people have said, you'll just have to live with it unless you want to send a manned rescue mission. If you want to cheat then just edit the persistence file, it's not gonna magically repair itself otherwise. And, really, dealing with unplanned problems is a big source of emergent gameplay. Losing is fun, after all

On a slightly related note, I'd suggest rebinding the rover controls to the arrow keys; that way you can drive around without also applying torque from the reaction wheels, which is what happens when you try using WASD for rovers. You could just use docking mode, as Eddie said, but having them on seperate keys and using normal flight mode gives you more options, since you can still manually control the reaction wheels with WASD if you need to.

[pincushionman]

This is also a big reason to have six wheels rather than four.

[Skorpychan]

That's the inherent problem with unmanned rover. Spirit and Opportunity have had similar issues IRL, with one dragging a wheel for ages before finally becoming a 'stationary science platform', which is a fancy term for 'crippled rover'.

[lextacy]

some of you have some misinformation on about the broken wheel.....the wheels broke in mid flight ( somewhere from lift off till descent) because of a collision bug. This is why im stressing a quick fix due to this not being my fault.

here is the rover before it lifted off. Found out its a Procedural fairing bug where it uses an invisible collision box too far into the wheels. This 2 of my wheels broke at an unknown time in flight.

This rover is using the "speeding bullet" method of delivery

Edited February 4, 2015 by lextacy

[eddiew]

Ohh... ok, well, you've gained some sympathy, but unfortunately the answer is still the same in that you can't fix this outside of editing the save file.

I can suggest KW Rocketry fairings instead, since I've never had a problem with those. Your rover looks like it would fit within a 2.5 or expanded-2.5m fairing from that pack

[Enceos]

You can always adjust the extra radius of procedural fairings, its in the fairing base tweakables.

[lextacy]

I hacked the parts in teh persistient file. All is well

[flatbear]

On 2/3/2015 at 3:44 AM, lextacy said:

I hacked the parts in teh persistient file. All is well

how do you hack persistent files? I have the same problem with my rover on duna.  its wheels broke on ascent from kerbin but I didnt notice it until I got to duna XD

 

Edited April 25, 2016 by flatbear

[lextacy]

you can do it, a persistent file is really just a fancy text file. You would search for your craft name in that file and then look under all the code beneath it for the part name of the broken wheel. Then change the "status = broken!"  to the one of a working wheel. Someone chime in I forget what the line was